Certain drugs can cause hallucinations. Some illegal drugs are taken because they cause hallucinations. Certain mental illnesses can also cause hallucinations. In some cases, withdrawal of a drug can also cause hallucinations. This has especially been reported by people trying to stop taking sleeping pills, or by alcoholics.
1 What are the different types of hallucinations?
2 How many people are affected by hallucinations?
3 What are the causes of hallucinations?
Some diseases such as brain disorders or infections may cause a person to have hallucinations. As well, an alcoholic (person who is addicted to alcohol) who stops drinking alcohol suddenly may experience a type of hallucinations called delirium tremens (or "DT's"). Some people have hallucinations if they do not sleep for a number of days, or if they do not eat for a number of days.
Some people have hallucinations because they purposefully or accidentally put chemicals or drugs into their bodies.
Some people use illegal drugs that cause vivid hallucinations, such as LSD ("acid") and PCP ("angel dust"). Many kinds of drugs - even legal ones - will cause hallucinations, if very large doses are taken, and it is seen as a side effect.
Some legal drugs that dentists, doctors, or surgeons use cause hallucinations. The dentists, doctors, and surgeons use drugs called anaesthetics to make people not feel pain, or to make people become unconscious. But the drugs also have some other additional effects, which are called side effects, such as nausea (feeling sick) and hallucinations.
Many dentists use an anaesthetic called nitrous oxide ("laughing gas"). Inhaling large quantities of nitrous oxide can cause people to have hallucinations. Doctors and surgeons use many types of anaesthetic gases so that patients who are being operated become unconscious. When a person inhales anaesthetic gases, they may have hallucinations for several minutes, until they become unconscious.
Some adults accidentally swallow a poisonous chemical because it is in a bottle that has the wrong label. In some cases, children swallow a poisonous chemical because they think that it is a food product or a drink. Some dangerous, poisonous chemicals which can make people very sick or even kill them also cause hallucinations.
Some people have hallucinations when they have not slept for a long time; other people have something resembling a hallucination before falling asleep. This is usually called hypnagogia. Most of the time, the people experiencing this kind of hallucinations are aware of the fact that they are not real.
↑ Sidgwick, H., Johnson, A, Myers, FWH et al. (1894) Report on the census of hallucinations. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 34, 25-394.
↑ Ohayon MM. (2000). "Prevalence of hallucinations and their pathological associations in the general population". Psychiatry Research (97(2-3)): 153-64.. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11166087&dopt=Abstract.
This page was last changed on 31 August 2017, at 02:56.